During a recent re-viewing of The Empire Strikes Back I was struck by the fabulous wealth of Lando Calrissian -- owner/ruler of Cloud City, an enormous mining operation on a remote gas planet. He was far wealthier and more powerful than any real person has ever been (other than in a capacity such as President or Pope wherein a person exercises the power of a larger organization that's independent of the administrator), ruling over a population of millions of employees and the enormous resources of a floating city, complete with space ships, droids, a military, and so forth. And yet, when the Empire shows up he's forced to kowtow before an even greater power, because in the Star Wars universe he was still a rather small fish.
The difference between Lando Calrissian and Bill Gates is that Lando lived in an enormously larger pond. Even though he was far richer than Bill Gates, he was far from the top of his societal wealth/power pyramid. In the Star Wars universe the galaxy had millions of populated planets, with an unknown population that must have numbered in the quadrillions. With such a large base it's not inconceivable that Lando could scoundrel [That's not a verb -- Ed.] his way up to a position of such power in a relatively short period of time
is lando really richer than gates? Gates has more money than a lot of countries -- he has enough money to run his own military and so on. We just don't have the technology to mine jupiter or saturn yet.
interesting point though. i don't know how well thought out the economics of star wars is, but there seem to be a lot of well trained schmoes dressed in white who i guess don't get paid much, as they're "expendable" -- are they slaves i wonder?
j: Gotta remember too that SW is fantasy, not sci-fi. It's not intended to be realistic or even based on reality.
well of course that's true, but it's interesting to predict how economics will be affected when we start to exploit non-terran resources. Suddenly, earthly wealth starts to look modest. I think you lando example is good.